Grab Your Business Plan: It's National Small Business Week

National Small Business Week (NSBW), the annual event for small business operators sponsored by the US Small Business Administration (SBA), officially runs May 5-11. But the SBA kicked off the event last Friday with a disaster relief-oriented Hackathon.

It's May again, which means the US Small Business Administration (SBA) is kicking off its National Small Business Week (NSBW) again. It officially runs May 5-11, and you can follow #SmallBusinessWeek on Twitter to get live updates on the week's events. But when PCMag got on the phone with G. Nagesh Rao of the SBA, we discovered that the SBA actually kicked off its first NSBW event on Friday, May 3 in Washington, DC. It was called "Hackathon 2019: Developers for Disaster Relief" and ran the whole weekend, May 3-5. More on the Hackathon after some background information about the SBA. Like, to start, what's the SBA and why should you pay attention to what it does during NSBW?

What Is the SBA?

The SBA was founded in 1953 by President Eisenhower with the signing of the Small Business Act. Since then, the SBA has grown to an organization that facilitates billions of dollars' worth of funding to startups and small businesses every year (more than $80 billion since its inception), both directly and indirectly. To get a breakdown, spend some time on the SBA website and you'll discover not only how the SBA provides funding but also a wealth of free learning materials for small business beginners, such as 10 steps to start your business.

You'll find webinars on various aspects of business planning and operation, including how to build your business through email marketing as well as small business accounting tips. There are even free networking events, like this 2-day virtual conference that's open to SBA users and anyone else who takes the time to register.

The internet boom has fostered an assumption among many startup founders in which they believe the only money available to them comes either from angel investors or full-on venture capitalists (VCs). And in the mad race to snag that VC cash, they often skip over the SBA because they think the SBA is just about providing small loans to small businesses in small locales. That's a mistake.

The SBA is literally the spear tip of the government's drive to foster small business growth—something absolutely vital to the long-term health of our economy. Sure the SBA facilitates funding, but it does a whole lot more, too. Entrepreneurs can benefit from the SBA almost as soon as they're done with the first napkin doodle of their Big Idea. That's because, aside from dishing out greenbacks to deserving companies, the SBA also deals in another important startup commodity: experience.

The SBA has several mentoring and learning programs available to small business owners and entrepreneurs. If you're in the US, then you've got several within driving distance right now. There's SCORE (previously known as the "Service Corps of Retired Executives"), which is a nonprofit association that provides free learning and face-to-face mentoring by experienced business executives to budding entreprenuers at a local level. This means you'll sit down with someone who has real-world business chops and can help you write and organize your business plan, strategize future growth, and find the right funding options for your situation.

And if SCORE isn't your cup of tea, there are also Small Business Development Centers at every state university in the country as well as in most midsize to large cities. These offer similar services as do the various demographic-focused and minority-focused SBA offices.

Direct and Indirect Funding in Big Numbers

Returning to how the SBA provides funding, the organization helps grow companies in many ways, but financially, they do it through two primary channels. First, they do it by loaning money to licensed private investment funds, otherwise known as Small Business Investment Companies (SBICs), so those organizations can invest in small businesses on their own. Second, they do it by providing cash grants directly to growing companies via the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.

The SBA works with more than 300 licensed SBICs all across the country, and generally doubles the money that they raise to invest in growth companies, usually at about 3.5 percent interest over 10 years. The SBICs then go and invest that money into thousands of small businesses every year. That's not only excellent financing but it's also effective. Alumni of these investments comprise a host of big-name companies, including Amgen, AOL, Apple, Costco Wholesale Corporation, FedEx, and many more. But, while enabling third-party equity companies to invest in small businesses with less risk is key to the SBA's mission, they also help small businesses through the SBIR program.

Through the SBIR and STTR programs, the SBA averages about $2.5 billion per year that they hand out directly as cash grants to deserving small business applicants. This means they can fund startups that are mapped against the needs of other government divisions. For example, if the US Department of Defense (DOD) needs a new way to weave Kevlar to make a more effective bulletproof vest, then the SBA can find an innovator in that space and help fund it so it can fulfill the DOD's need. It's an effective system and one that the SBA works hard to execute year-round.

NSBW 2019 Kicks Off With a Hackathon

As stated earlier, the SBA's website officially lists the date of NSBW as running from May 5-11. However, the SBA actually kicked the week off several days prior with one of its most anticipated events: the most recent Hackathon, called "Hackathon 2019: Developers for Disaster Relief."

"We try to do two Hackathon events per year," said the aforementioned G. Nagesh Rao (pictured below). He is the Director of Business Technology Solutions in the SBA's Office of the Chief Information Officer-Business Technology Solutions (OCIO-BiTS) division. "This one is going to focus on disaster assistance: looking at new [disaster response and recovery] tools, processes, and solutions to help get the right help to disaster victims faster and more efficiently."

For this most recent Hackathon, the SBA worked with Visa to host the event at the IN3DC incubator facility in Washington, DC. The event began, Friday May 3, at 6 p.m. (ET). Attendees arrived to a welcome dinner, after which they formed teams, and chose one of several presented problems to solve. After that, the hacking started and ran clean through Sunday morning. After the hacking, the teams presented or demonstrate their new processes or minimally viable products to a panel of judges that included: Maria Roat, CIO of the SBA; Nate Smith, Vice President of Global Small Business at Visa; Michelai Graham, DC Market Editor for Technical.ly; and Janet Jucker, President of Three Brothers Bakery.

This year's winners were a diverse lot as Sunday's judging proved (see snapshots of the event off the SBA's Twitter feed):

First place, a prize worth $25,000 went toSnapShot. Thisapp uses bookkeeping APIs that let small businesses catalog their organization's assets. That way, once a disaster occurs, uses can then employ artificial intelligence (AI)-based damage detection software to come up with new valuation numbers for damaged assets.

Second place was $15,000 and went toDisaster Recovery Score. This app helps businesses to consolidate forms and disaster resources when filing for insurance claims. The app also delivers a "disaster readiness" score that helps a small business rate its ability to recover from a disaster.

The Third place prize of $10,000 was won byRoute7. Another app contender, this one usesAmazonAlexa'svoice assistant as well as visual recognition software to make the pre- and post-disaster inventory process faster and easier.

Another prize was the Visa API Challenge Winner, which amounted to $5,000 and also went to Disaster Recovery Score, described above.

The last prize was the Authorize.net API Winner. That was worth $5,000 and went toSBAssist, a web-based platform that shows maps of where small businesses affected by federally and state declared disasters are located. The system then lets users contribute to those businesses and receive social badges in response.

Rao noted that these Hackathon events are beneficial to more than just participants. Not everyone who attends a Hackathon participates in the actual contest. Many attendees are local business operators who are intrigued by the event's premise and are interested in new ideas, new approaches to old problems, and new talent.

Answer: Plenty. First and foremost: events, both physical and virtual. Aside from the Hackathon described earlier, there are also a series of national awards ceremonies that you can follow on the SBA's Facebook page. These will cover a variety of topics, including "Leader of the Year" and "Small Business Investment Company of the Year."

There are also other events to come, including webinars like "Social Media Tips for Small Businesses" as well as an NSBW Twitter chat discussing how to start and grow your small business. This chat will include basic information on how to get started as well as more advanced tips and tricks for those further along in the journey.

For PCMag's part, we will be celebrating small business technology for the entirety of NSBW, with a series of exciting small business-focused articles. We'll share some great tips on building your own e-commerce business, daily updates of important small business technology products and tools, as well as a series of trend pieces that will discuss emerging trends that will be affecting small business operators in the coming year.

Get Our Best Stories!

This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.